Retail & Consumer

Sunsilk brand bible

A new handbag sized testament for leading brand to guide global marketeers at Unilever

In the beginning..

In 1930, British soap makers, the Lever Brothers and Dutch margarine producers Unie, merged to become Unilever.
During the first decade the partnership grew and new ventures were successfully launched making tremendous
growth, thriving during economic crises like the WW1 and the Great Depression. Today, the multinational organisation operates 400 brands in over 100 countries. Whether cleaning your home, washing your hair or feeding your baby there is a Unilever brand sitting somewhere in your home.
First launched in the UK in 1954, Sunsilk very quickly became Unilever’s top international brand of Shampoo and within five years it was a success story in over eighteen countries worldwide.Now, Sunsilk, (also internationally known as Elidor, Seda & Sedal) is sold in over 68 countries across the globe.
Combining almost 200 years of experience into each bottle, Sunsilk has been expertly produced to provide a customised product to suits ones needs. Originally aimed at women, a UK ad campaign in the 1960’s saw a television commercial of Sunsilk featuring a tune composed by John Barry, “The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair”, which became so popular that it was later released as a chart topping single! During the 70’s, Sunsilk launched its first hair Conditioner featuring variants for Dry,

Internal spreads included exisiting advertising alongside editoral pages individualy designed to replicate the leading womens consumer glossy magazines of the day

Let there be light

Back in 2004 the Hatch missionaries were tasked with the design and print of a Sunsilk brand bible. A ‘live and die by’ piece of internal collateral, identifying & presenting the personalites of the ‘Sunsilk’ woman, illustrating both her and Sunsilk’s demographics and brand objectives to the companies global marketeers and their associated agencies. The piece was to form a handy, readable and attractive must-have using a new and popular format. And as previously mentioned with this product being sold in 68 countries world wide there was definatley cause to preach the same sermon in order to keep the brand faith true and consistent.

More David than Goliath

In the early ‘noughties’ all consumer titles from Marie Clare to Vogue were published in the standard oversized A4 magazine format. The success of ‘size pioneering’ Glamour Magazine, caused its rivals at Cosmo serious toothache, commanding a format rethink of the former top-seller, such was the success of Glamours’ A5 handbag edition, it soon took over to become the number one, must-have, travel companion for young women. Since 2003, this mini-mag format has set the president for many a publication and was to become the architectural basis of our Brand Bible which would also emulate the design style of these glossy titles.

More examples of internal double page spreads that really relay the unique nature of page

Sunsilks message gets untangled with Hatch

Our brief was not only to emulate this innovative new size format but the internal editorial pages were to be bespokely designed in the style of the above mentioned glossy consumer titles with no two pages following the same style template.
This proved to be a challenge with every spread requiring new header, sub head, stanfirst, body & quotation style, along with an ever changing colour pallete and a huge variety of typefaces.

Spreading the word

When it came to laying out the content we had to blend vital need-to-know company information & target info such as: brand ethos, performance information, global strategies,
product variants and media platforms, with an illustration of ‘the Sunsilk woman’ of which there were 5 main types

- this was a mount sinai of a task - but by no means impossible for the miracle workers at Hatch. So we locked ourselves away and began to part the waves of information, tease out the tangle of images and guidelines… and add order to chaos.
We looked at our creation, and were happy.

Spotting the Sunsilk Woman and their personality traits was key for the marketing disciples to truly understand their target demographic

Turning Water into Wine

When it came to the production of this process the client was happy for the Hatch team to see this job through to finalisation. With a whole host of tried and trusted specialist printers on our books we were able to source the most competitive quote which would include our agency discount. Added to this we were to oversee the print management side of things which took all of the post production stress and hassle away from client.

For a printed piece that was to be distributed internaly amongst the Sunsilk global marketing team and associated agencies the print budget was generious to say the least.
Lithographically printed with not one but two additional special metalic colours throughout, a gloss UV varnished perfect bound cover all printed on a premium paper stock sourced and suggested by ourselves.

Normal and Greasy hair, and the whole Sunsilk range was relaunched with improved formulations and packaging to bring the brand into the 80’s. Today the haircare range offers a unique formula’s and ingredients, to combine the best from the worlds of nature and science to combat any haircare problem.

Sunsilk brand bible

Branding Supersoft for ITV2

Smoothly does it, a tasty branding job for Schwarzkopf to really get our teeth into..

Enlighten us..

The design team at Hatch were ecstatic when asked to brand the Schwarzkopf Training Academy in London’s W1 for ‘Coleen’s Real Woman’, an ITV2 show that challenged the image-obsessed society that we live in and searched for REAL women to put into high profile advertising and modelling jobs.
Initially, Hatch met with the Schwarzkopf head Marketing team at the academy to get a feel for the space, to discuss the brief, what the event was all about and what the client wanted to achieve from the branding campaign.
To be endorsed by Coleen Rooney and Lisa Snowdon, this new haircare range was to be showcased as large format artwork, to cover an entire wall along with signage for application to glass doors and lightboxes. The reception area and conference room were also to be fully branded.

Our mobile photography 'studio' - an invaluable service to many of our clients both past and present.

Lights, camera, action!

So, how to visually convey the delicious nature of this mouth-watering new range; with the rare capability to cover every discipline required to take a design job from initial sketch right through to top-drawer completion, Hatch began this project with a custom built photo shoot.
Employing our specialised mobile photography equipment; an anti-reflection cube to filter light, preventing shadows and glare; our 'continuous light' tungsten projectors and a top of the range Canon EOS 1D Camera, we were able to accurately shoot a variety of product compositions from individually ‘flavoured’ pairs right through to shots of the whole delectable range. Our fully networked equipment instantly fed the shots into the hands of our awaiting artwork-wizards.
Every speck of dust, imperfection on the packaging was meticulously digitally corrected, although shot in a controlled environment colour consistency between shots was also essential as they would likely be seen together in future marketing use. In a similarly meticulous way, the positioning of each separate product needed to be equally spaced and identically angled.

Upon final approval, all images were saved in both print and screen ready formats which were burned onto a DVD, fully branded with both contents inlay and front cover artworked to perfection, its purpose to serve as future marketing and sales collateral.

A silky, smooth result..

With the reception area and conference room fully branded, Hatch set the scene for this televised event. Our on-hand and one-stop-shop method of working really helped cut out costly

photographer’s expenses and the sometimes complicated and lengthy intervention of outside suppliers, enabling both the client to hit budget and Hatch to smoothly hit brief and deadline.

About the show..

Coleen faces her toughest challenge yet on her search for Real women. She has to find five different girls with five different hair types of hair for major hair product brand Schwarzkopf’s new range. She headed to Manchester for her open casting in search of the perfect hair and to help her street cast she enlists celebrity hairdresser Vernon. To help Coleen at the open

castings was top fashion producer Camilla Johnson Hill who has worked on campaigns from Gucci to Gap. The chosen five real women get made over by a professional team and then go head to head with the industries finest models to win the contract of a lifetime. Watch Lisa Snowdon get her summer waves with the Supersoft Smoothie from Schwarkopf below.